Spartan Resistance

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Justin considered his short hair and the upright set of his shoulders. “You look like you’ve done your time in the military, too.”

  “A very, very long time ago. It didn’t last long,” Wolffe confessed. “The military and I disagree on the meaning of life.”

  Justin laughed. “I suspect a great many people object to your interpretation of the meaning of life.”

  Wolffe smiled easily. “So my ex-wife told me, six months after the wedding.”

  Justin nodded. “I’m aware of your recent misfortune,” although he didn’t mention where he had learned the facts from. “I’m very sorry.”

  Wolffe shrugged.

  “I was under the impression you were on Evergreen. Recovering.”

  Wolffe’s smile broadened. “I was. But my recovery plan latched onto someone richer. On Evergreen there is always someone richer. Cáel Stelios I am not.”

  “But you do very well, anyway,” Justin pointed out. “You would not be here talking to us about a tour if you did not. You can afford an off-world holiday the same month you take a time tour.”

  Wolffe studied him. “You’re the Australian, aren’t you?”

  “Guilty.”

  “But you’re based here in Rome? There’s an agency branch in Sydney…and Melbourne, too, I think.”

  “And in Perth, although that branch is primarily there to give the agency arrival chambers in that location. It’s very remote.”

  “Wanted to get away from the remoteness?” Wolffe asked.

  “My partners are both based here.”

  Wolffe’s attention snapped tighter. “You’re not speaking of business partners, I presume?”

  “No,” Justin said flatly.

  “How very intriguing,” Wolffe said softly. “I’ve heard before that vampires lean toward ménages. All that long life is too much for a single partner.” Then he grinned again, the same charming and self-deprecating smile as before. “I’ve had ménage sex of course—hasn’t everyone? But I imagine a long term relationship is quite different. Are they both pretty?”

  “She is beautiful,” Justin replied. “And he is very attractive. To me, anyway.”

  Wolffe considered him again. “I suspect, Mr. Kelly, that a conversation with you over a dram or two of brandy would be very interesting indeed.”

  Justin suspected the same could be said for Wolffe but he had learned a long time ago to keep clients at arm’s length, at least until he had got to know them a lot better, which didn’t happen very often. He shrugged. “There are much more interesting people working for the Agency than me, I assure you. Is this time tour to be part of your recovery, Mr. Wolffe?”

  Wolffe blew out a heavy breath. “Ah…women! Life would be utterly boring without them.” He sat back, relaxing. “I’m going solo on this one. I need breathing room. I thought that peeking in on my ancestors might give me some perspective.”

  “It will most certainly do that,” Justin said heartily. He stood up again. “We can iron out details later, after the contract has been signed. But for now, would you like a tour of the public areas of the agency, Mr. Wolffe?”

  “I would very much like that,” Wolffe said, standing, too. And yeah, he was taller. “Call me Laszlo.”

  “I’m Justin.” Justin opened the door and hoped that every woman with a pulse—or without one, come to that—had mysteriously vanished from the grounds. It was going to be an interesting tour if Laszlo Wolffe lived up to his reputation.

  * * * * *

  Mariana saw Justin come into the operations center, a customer in tow, but didn’t pay any attention to them. The sales process never involved her, which she was more than happy with. Justin was good at his job—one of the best—but when she listened to him talking about his work with the other consultants or with the agency members he trusted the most, it seemed to her that he was more of a diplomat and strategist, psychologist and counselor, than a salesman. She would never have been able to do something like that. Dealing with people wasn’t one of her strengths, so she worked doubly hard at what she was good at, to make up for it.

  Instead, she looked around the room, observing in a single sweeping glance that everything was orderly and there was nothing lying around likely to make a human uneasy. It wasn’t unheard of for someone to come in from the field still wearing their period clothing and strip down while they were standing at the big central table handing over their report to Brenden and, these days, usually her. Both Nayara and Ryan were far too busy to personally listen to debriefings, even though the process of analyzing each tour provided valuable information.

  Mariana had seen Viking helmets, medieval maces, plate armor, bustles, petticoats and boots, reticules and codpieces strewn across the table and much more. Usually, the traveler swept everything up when they left, but sometimes things were overlooked.

  But everything was orderly and normal today, so she went back to docking the reading boards she had found lying around the agency, forgotten and overlooked. The boards were efficient at uploading their data, but it was good to dock them every now and again, so they could directly interface with the network and completely synchronize. Then she would add them to the stack that lived permanently on the end of the desk, where agency members could help themselves as needed.

  “Hello, there.”

  Mariana turned, startled. She took in the man who had come up behind her. It was Justin’s client. Around his shoulder, she could just see Justin hurrying toward them.

  “I couldn’t help noticing you when I came in,” the man said.

  His face was familiar to her, but she couldn’t place it. He was probably someone famous. The agency tended to assign the celebrities to Justin because he could handle them so well.

  Mariana smiled up at the man. “I’m quite human,” she assured him. “Nothing to notice. Please excuse me.” She turned back to the desk and unplugged a synchronized board. Justin would shepherd the man back to the other end of the big table. There, they would be in the least danger of tripping anyone up, for that end of the table was out of the way of the normal traffic routes through and around the room.

  “What time do you finish work?” he asked.

  Mariana turned to face him again, struggling to find a civil answer among the many that occurred to her. She fell back upon security doctrine, almost channeling Brenden. “The personal movements of agency members are not shared with the public. I’m sure you’re aware of some of the concerns we have faced recently and I’m also sure you understand why such information is restricted.” She gave him a stiff smile and glanced at Justin as he stepped up beside the man, relief touching her. Justin would deal with this.

  Justin’s gaze flickered toward her and she had the oddest sensation he was trying to apologize silently. He spoke to the man. “Laszlo, we have a lot of ground to cover yet. Unless you want to be here for a week, we should move on.”

  Laszlo…Wolffe. The names coupled up in Mariana’s mind and she could feel her jaw trying to descend. This was the great Lothario? The man who went through women like a dose of salts? He didn’t match his reputation at all.

  She reassessed him quickly, trying to add it up and coming up with a null equation. He wasn’t ugly, which some men seemed to turn into an advantage. But he wasn’t handsome, either. There were vid models and media darlings and the vampires themselves against which Mariana could measure what beauty really meant and this Laszlo didn’t measure up.

  He was attractive in a rough, hewn-out-of-teak way. His hair was blond-ish. Dirty blond with the ends fading to true blond. From the sun? He spent a lot of time lolling around bodies of water and female bodies, too. Or so the nets said.

  He was just a little bit taller than Justin, which put him close to Brenden’s height. But his shoulders weren’t as big. His neck was thick with muscle, his jaw very square. His nose was imperfect. There was a slight bump in it.

  The overall impression Mariana got was one of endurance. Not sexiness, which she had automatically braced he
rself against when she had put his name together.

  Wolffe lifted his hand up in response to Justin’s suggestion they move on. His gaze hadn’t moved away from her. His eyes, she admitted, were his best feature. A pale green. They were looking at her directly. Frankly.

  “I’m not a terrorist plotting your downfall.” Laszlo said quietly. “I was asking you on a date.” There was a quality to his tone that said he was quite serious.

  “Oh, hell,” Justin said, the words gusted out with a sigh.

  Mariana pressed her lips together. Justin’s dismay told her this wasn’t some agency joke. She wasn’t being set up. Laszlo Wolffe, charmer of the age, was asking her on a date.

  “You don’t know who I am,” she told him. “You don’t even know my name.”

  “You’re human,” he said. “You’re doing administrative work in a secure area of the agency. All in all, I’m guessing you’re Mariana Jones, Nayara’s right hand. And her third and fourth hands, too, if the rumors are correct.”

  “No,” Mariana said slowly. He didn’t seem to understand. “You don’t want to go out with me.”

  “Why on earth wouldn’t I?” he returned. He sounded curious, almost baffled.

  Mariana looked at Justin helplessly. The corners of his mouth were lifting just a little bit, like he was holding back a bigger smile. “You explain to him, Justin,” she said.

  Justin’s smile extinguished. “Like bloody hell,” he said, with a degree of heat.

  “Very wise,” Wolffe said softly. “Listing a lady’s drawbacks is never received well, even if she asks for them.”

  “Too right,” Justin agreed heartily.

  “The voice of experience,” Wolffe said with a smile. He had a nice smile and white teeth that were just a little bit crooked, which was amazing in this day and age when teeth were aligned properly in a child’s second year. Perhaps he came from poor beginnings. She realized she didn’t know anything about him except for his propensity for wooing women.

  Wolffe was looking at her expectantly. He wasn’t trying to seduce her into saying yes with lots of pretty compliments or a warm and insincere glow in his eyes. He was just waiting, although his gaze was intense, for he was watching her carefully. It was almost uncomfortable to be stared at so openly.

  Mariana breathed in, already framing a polite refusal. It was quite ridiculous, the idea of her going out with Laszlo Wolffe. Wolffe stood squarely in front of her, Justin to one side and between them, she could see Brenden standing over the big networked conference table. He was leaning over it, resting his upper body weight on his hands and he was staring at the three of them as frankly as Wolffe was looking at her. There was a scowl on his face, puckering his brows.

  Mariana gave Wolffe a small smile. “I would like to go out with you, Mr. Wolffe.”

  Wolffe smiled and now she saw the warmth in his gaze. But it was pleasure, not promise. “Tonight?” he pressed.

  Justin shifted on his feet. “Mariana, could I have a quick word?”

  She didn’t look at him. Instead, she gave Wolffe her sunniest smile. “Tonight would be wonderful.”

  Brendan turned and stalked into his office. She looked at the blank, closed door. Had he heard? Of course, he was vampire and had enhanced senses….

  Wolffe picked up her hand. He didn’t quite kiss it and he didn’t quite bow over it, but his square shoulders seemed to straighten up just a bit. “That pleases me more than you know,” he said softly.

  Oddly, Mariana believed him.

  Justin touched the man’s arm. “We should keep moving,” he suggested.

  “Once Mariana gives me her contact code.”

  “Oh, of course.” She lifted the board she was holding. “I’ll send it to you. Justin has your personal codes. I’ll get them from him.”

  Wolffe nodded. “Seven, tonight,” he added.

  Mariana watched the two of them walk across the room. Wolffe’s rear view was worth watching. The shoulders were broad, outlined under a sweater than clinged nicely. They did that v-shaped swoop down to his hips. His backside….

  She sighed. What on earth had she been thinking? A date with one of the world’s most enigmatic and eligible bachelors? Worse, he was rebounding from a marriage breakup. That made him even more unavailable.

  Mariana drew in a breath, thinking that over. If he was unavailable, then there was no danger of entanglements and…complications. Besides, the idea of going out with Laszlo Wolffe was just a little bit intriguing.

  She turned back to her work, her gaze barely flickering toward the office with the closed door.

  * * * * *

  “You don’t approve,” Laszlo said, once they were beyond the security center doors.

  Justin picked his words carefully. “I like Mariana. I know her well enough to know that she is light years away from being the sort of recovery you’re looking for.”

  “Yes, I could see that. Don’t worry, Justin. Your friend is safer in my company than just about any other person on the planet.”

  Justin snorted. “You’re a man with a pulse.”

  Wolffe clapped him on the shoulder. “Yes, indeed,” he agreed heartily, “and life just made a tiny shift in another direction. Don’t you find the possibilities of unlikely scenarios the most delicious entertainment?”

  “Mariana is not entertainment,” Justin said stiffly. “Why do you sound like an old man, all of a sudden?”

  Laszlo shook his head, all the merriment fading from his face. “Have your heart broken often enough and you, too, would sound like me.”

  Justin wanted to laugh in disbelief again, but the look in Laszlo’s eyes stopped him. Just for a moment, he looked very old indeed.

  Chapter Four

  Detroit-Rocktown Supercity, 2265 A.D.

  Kieran found it mildly ironic that he was back once again among the ruins and tenements of Detroit-Rocktown Supercity, tramping the damp streets with his hands in the deep pockets of his coat. He hadn’t enjoyed the first two occasions he had been here, last year, when Brenden had dug Rhydder up from his self-inflicted exile as a human living three minutes in the past.

  This time, it was summer. The streets were humid and the smell rising from the drains and gutters one of fetid rankness. The recent shower of rain didn’t help. No wonder there was no one on the streets, not for as far as he could see.

  The building with the bite taken out of it was just ahead. It had been described to him that way and the image he had been sent matched the building just ahead. Sometime in the past, something had taken a swipe out of the side of the six story building, remove a giant’s handful of the structure with surgical precision. It looked exactly like a giant had taken a bite out of the building.

  A big enough laser canon would do something like that, but as the DRS was a free zone, it meant that one of the residents had control of the canon. That was not a cheerful thought.

  Kieran cleared his mind of questions and felt ahead mentally. They were there, behind the closed doors of the office block. Someone had covered the broken windows with old bed sheets, but the glass inside what had once been chrome doors was gone. The chrome had rusted over and was dull and lifeless.

  Whoever waited ahead of him was masking their mental signatures. They didn’t know that he could detect them by the mask itself. They stood like negative dark space on a mental landscape that, if he chose to extend his sensitivity far enough, could include every creature in the free zone. Thanks to Pritti, his mental abilities had been trained and focused with laser precision. He knew there was more for him to discover, too.

  The thought was accompanied by a whisper of a presence. Far back in his mind he heard a soft giggle. The mental sound carried Pritti’s essence. What was left of her sometimes expressed itself this way. He felt her approval. Then the spirit, if it was a spirit, was gone.

  Kieran pushed his hands deeper into his pockets and hunched his shoulders inside the coat, stretching and warming the muscles.

  Then he straight-ar
med the right hand side of the door, pushing it open. They knew he was here. He had not masked his presence, even though he could have if he had thought it prudent. They knew, he knew. Coyness was useless.

  He stepped inside and looked around what had once been an elegant foyer with black, shiny tiles and lots of chrome and glass. It was very Art Deco, or even Nuevo Art Deco, but elegance had fled long ago. Garbage was strewn across the floor, along with broken glass and dust. The black tiles were scratched and some of them were shattered. They were no longer shiny. The building had been built recently enough to have drop shafts instead of elevators, but they stood open-mouthed, black and lifeless.

  The sheets over the windows dimmed the light inside, making it an enclosed and private space. Someone had tried living here once, but had moved on. It was probably the lack of protection from the elements. The foyer would keep rain off, but it would be a cold place in the middle of winter. On the far side, close by the shattered windows, were the remains of a fire, the ashes grey and white, which meant more than just wood had been burnt.

  Kieran quartered the area with his gaze and settled on the three people gathered in the deep corner created by the drop shafts, where there was no window. They were the same three people he remembered from the barracks. This was the three who had had walked through a dormitory full of Universal Wardens and laid every single one of them out cold…except for him.

  The woman and the older man were the mouthpieces. So Kieran looked at the younger man, who had long black hair and a full beard. “So, you need my help.”

  The man considered him. “You are much more powerful, more focused, than when we last met. Someone has trained you.”

  “Agreed. Get to the point. I didn’t come all this way just to stand around in this heat and gossip.”

  “You can remove your coat if you wish,” the woman said. “You will have no need for physical weapons, with us.”

  “But I might need mental weapons?” Kieran grinned. “You aren’t the only predators in the area. Again, let’s get to the point.”